Solar Dragons LLC

I’ve been learning so much in the last few days, I cant sleep. A lot of silly questions I needed answers to, I just got in the last few days. I found out how to center web pages without complicated code, I’m almost finished with that illustration I’ve been working on too. I have a book that is telling me to offer free stuff on my site. So I found a site this morning, by accident, that lets me put flash games on my site. I’ve been having some issues with the size of my site, but I’ve ran into a lot of sites that hove good, clean designs that don’t clutter up the page. You’d be surprised sometimes how the simple sites have really good design elements.

Everything seems to be coming together for the new site. I’m coming up with some good designs and color schemes. I’ve been working on some free stuff for the site to get repeat visitors. There’s a flash game I want to try out and a photo slideshow that is pretty easy to dabble around with. I’m working on a picture a friend of mine created a while ago. I’m airbrushing as best as I can but its not as easy as I would like. I have a graphics tablet, which helps a lot, but there’s not substitute for the feel of a drawing pad and a pencil in hand. I’m telling myself that its the same thing with the graphics tablet, but I need a whole lot of practice.

My design suite came yesterday. I’ve been having a blast with it. My bibles came at the same time. So I’ve been having a lot on my plate. There was some freebies that came with registering. I wound up getting the free fonts by accident but they are really good. I’ve been getting my menu together for the new site. I’m going to have a ‘Work in Progress’ page for the stuff that I’m currently learning. I’ve been retouching photos, airbrushing images and flash has some new stuff I want to check out too.

I love those words. My CS3 bibles and the Design Suite should be hear before the week is out. I reestablished some contacts and worked on some wallpaper for the site. I’m going to try to have a lot of free things for the site, to encourage repeat visits. I’ve been toying around with Spry Widgets in the Dreamweaver trial. Those things just made my life a whole lot easier. I remember the old navigation menu that would say you could have only one per page. With Spry, you can have several. Plus the code is similar to what I used to do with layers before. This take 1/6 of the time now.

Flash on the other  hand is a completely different animal this time around. I have to learn Actionscript 3.0 if I want to maximize its usefulness. That was a kick in the pants because I HATE PROGRAMMING!!!! But what are you gonna do? So I’ll have to find a good Actionscript 3.0 book and get that. If any one knows a good book, let me know.

I’ve finally returned to my blogs. Over the past several months I’ve been learning php(sort of), Dreamweaver CS3(Amazing) and Photoshop CS3(see dreamweaver comment). I’ve been reestablishing contacts and getting robbed by pirates(long story). I’ve learned a lot about the business and where I want to take Solar Dragons. That Is obvious because I’m now using Word Press instead of Blogger. I’m forcing the business to be more independant. I think its better if I have my blog on my site instead of Blogger. I can control things better from here.

My laptop died, so I took the hard drive out and connected it to a data transfer kit. Some of the files were corrupted, including poems I wrote back in my college days. I’m in the process of creating a poetry site for a friend, so that made me nostalgic for my poems. The stupid drive ‘ate’ almost a 1/3 of them. I only have 72 poems left. My favorite was one called ‘Orange’.

After the crash, I had to get new toys. Adobe Design Premium CS3 is on its way (Sweet!) and so are the bibles for all the major 5 programs. Using the trial made it a must have. I want to get Contribute but I dont think the business needs it right now. I have a feeling it will soon. I switched from a laptop to a desktop. I’m better at hardware situations on a desktop anyway. I have a couple of other projects going on, so we will see where things go.

P.S. I won against the pirates